This collection spans humor, loneliness, the creepy, the bawdy, the American Dream, several American Nightmares, humor, and heartbreak. For that matter, most of the stories include three or four of those elements. I found the stories, in general, got stronger as I read, but that could be more that I was more attuned to what was going on. I tend to have trouble with humor; I miss it sometimes. My fallback position is pathos, not funny. So there are a few instances where I think I missed the boat completely, and I take full responsibility for that. One of the funniest stories is also one of my favorites; my other favorite is one of the saddest. And the story that had me most baffled – and still does – I still don’t know if it’s humor or not. But each was an enjoyable read.
I didn’t comment on “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched” here because I already discussed it when I read BASS 2010. In fact, it was the first story I blogged about, a little over a year ago; I’m sure I’d have very different comments today. I won’t even read the post now, because I’ll probably be embarrassed.
“God Bless America” (Southern Review) –
Billy Clamm had not signed up for Drama I, he had signed up for a tax-preparation course called Loopholes Ahoy! But the Medford Adult Education facility was a confusing one, full of strange underground corridors and bunkers, and Billy was somewhat easily disoriented, somewhat prone to distraction, particularly during the bleak winter months, and so he had found his way to the wrong classroom.
I was nervous after reading this story. While I enjoyed the Boston landmarks (I lived there for 20 years), the story itself did nothing for me. Not that it’s a bad story – it’s a rather enjoyable misadventure, doubling as a comedic mis-allegory for The American Dream, a fun satire. But I didn’t feel that whooosh in my soul that I’ve come to expect from Steve Almond (he gets graded on a curve; good isn’t good enough). And since I’d already read “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched,” (which I liked), I felt like 15% of the book was already gone and I didn’t have much to show for it. Does that make me a tough audience?
So I read it again, and found additional enjoyment in the misunderstood-allegory part. Billy hasn’t really paid much attention in History and Civics classes, about as much as some of the politicians who have stumbled onto the scene recently, substituting catchprases for policy and vague misrecollections for actual understanding:
But this was America, the land of opportunists, and here it wasn’t enough to want something, you had to fight for what you wanted and fight hard, fight through your own resistance and the jeers of others and physical adversity, which was what the Pilgrims had done vis-à-vis the Thanksgiving situation, and after them the colonists, who had bucked the most powerful empire on earth even though they were basically just a bunch of underfed tax evaders. And then the pioneers. No, you couldn’t forget the pioneers, who had traversed vast prairies and mountains, and battled Indians and grizzly bears and inclement weather and various kinds of pox, and some had even starved and had to eat each other to survive, which, by the way, would make a terrific film treatment, Billy thought, because it said so much about he indomitable spirit that had built the country. Not that cannibalism was part of the indomitable American spirit, but it showed how far some people would go to find good property.
At least he didn’t go on a TV reality show to find his fortune, which seems to be the preferred route these days.
“Hope Wood” (The Sun) –
Already our framed degrees were wilting. The future which we had talked about eagerly for years was upon us and our shock was not that this future should entail depression – which, idiotically, we took as a measure of our depth – but that it should prove so uninteresting.
Here is the whooosh. I’m not usually a fan of description, no matter how good, but I could become one thanks to stories like this. Two recent college grads learn something from the junkman, and somehow it doesn’t come across as hokey as all that. And I want to paint my windows so the house looks like it’s batting its eyelashes, and I want a fridge and a crib and a cash register just like the ones in the story. A little care, a little genius, and trash turns into treasure. And then there’s the baby…
“Not Until You Say Yes” (Ninth Letter) –
…her ideas about life had yellowed one by one, like old movie posters.
I’m torn on this story. I like the story, I’m just not sure about the way it’s told. Now, I have total confidence that Steve Almond can choose to tell a story in many, many ways, so he picked this way, and that choice puzzles me. It concerns a crochety sixty-seven-year-old woman who takes a job as a TSA agent, and a wise-ass ten-year-old who knows how to scam the airlines’ overbooking policies. Both characters are perfectly drawn, it’s true. There’s no sentiment here, in a story that could easily be derailed by cuteness. But the story proceeds in mincing little choppy steps, and I found it kind of unpleasant as a matter of style. I’m not saying lush prose is called for – that wouldn’t do at all – but there is a middle ground. Maybe the idea was to make me as irritated as the old woman. Considering I pretty much am the old woman, that wasn’t necessary, so it was overkill for me, but for others it might work. I’m also not crazy about how the ending was handled. There’s a line of dialogue that isn’t recorded for a couple of paragraphs, and that rang false to me. But I’m not about to start questioning Steve Almond’s choices; my purpose here is to learn.
Shotgun Wedding (New England Review) –
There were other discussions, later on. But these had been grim and cautious, more in the spirit of negotiations. As the years passed, as they racked up accolades and anniversaries, the idea of children was quietly subsumed into the looming issues of cohabitation and marriage. These, in turn, were weighed against career advancement and logistics. Brian didn’t avoid these matters. He was too clever for that. Instead he bled them of passion.
Carrie, ad exec at a San Diego boutique agency (“projects rather than campaigns, meaning they had integrity and a modern-art installation in the lobby that looked very much like a disemboweled ostrich”), goes to the doctor for the flu and discovers she’s pregnant by Brian, who’s in Milwaukee setting up his own agency (“then to send for her, as if she were some lady pioneer”). The story is pretty much her reaction to that, and her phone call to Brian, and culminates in food porn about a Philly cheesesteak (in San Diego? sacrilege!). Elliot Holt’s “Fem Care” was a much richer exploration of the topic. Except without the transplanted food porn. This felt… boilerplate. Which scares the hell out of me: have I learned anything in the past year?
Tamalpais (Virginia Quarterly Review)
I should have said something to Pound at that point. But I was very young and not much good at identifying my feelings. Besides, this was the best job I’d ever had and it was going to help me pay for the SAT prep course I was going to need to have a shot at Cal, and I felt, bizarrely, that Charlotte herself was a kind of test, a chance to see if I was worthy of better circumstances.
This is a lovely character study – a different kind of coming-of-age story with an ambiguous ending that I love. Austin is a sixteen-year-old waiter and UC-Berkeley aspirant (Electrical Engineering) at a snazzy restaurant on the hill overlooking the working-class valley where he lives. Charlotte is a customer who morphs over the course of the story from one thing into another. Watching Austin deal with her, with her kind of adult brokenness he seems to have not encountered up close before, is both sweet and sad as he fumbles and regroups and struggles to find his footing.
What the Bird Says (Southern Review) –
He had assumed his mother and sisters would run the show, that he’d be more of a special guest. But the old man had little use for the women. He’d been raised in a family of men, in a world of men, and now that he was departing that world he seemed to feel the need to settle up with the man he’d brought into it.
Jim visits the family manse in Old Dominion (or somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line) to attend the death of his patriarch father. I should recuse myself from this story, because I have a similar going-home-to-watch-Daddy-die tale. In fact, it’s the first story I ever wanted to write. I still haven’t written it. I was one of the women the old man had no use for, and as I hung around hoping to get my apology, the rest of my family made it clear they had no use for me, either. So I had some sympathy with Jim. But, again, I didn’t really care for the way the story was told. There were terrific scenes – the Bishop and the old man going through their joint recollections, which, owing to the illness of the old man, “settled into a kind of shorthand – the invocation of names. Ted Houghton. Forrest Drury. Buzz Shaw. The dear departed, all those jolly young souls fallen into graves.” And the linen that binds the women together: “linens which were to be washed, dried, folded, and tucked. He had never seen so much linen in his life.” And the final scene is great. But overall, it just didn’t work for me, mostly due to the voice of the prose. I just couldn’t find a person on the other end.
The Darkness Together (Southern Review) –
Then the train lurched and Hank stumbled against her and she let out a happy shriek, and as all this happened – Hank drawing his knee first into and then away from his mother’s bosom, she clinging to his belt loops, her forehead brushing his thigh – a third figure slipped into the compartment.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” he said.
Yes, it’s creepy. Ewwww creepy, not horror-story creepy. And the rest of the story is the interaction of these three players – teenage Hank, his not-very-subtly seductive mother, and stranger-come-to-town-on-a-train Nicholas Chaleaux, who sized them up right away and eases into confronting Mom with her behavior as the train ride continues, always backing off at the last possible moment. At any moment, of course, Mom could call the conductor and insist he be seated elsewhere. But she doesn’t. And it’s not just because then the story would be over. The final scene is the closest possible thing to a sex scene without actually sex, it’s really remarkably written. But it’s still creepy. And I didn’t really want to know much more about this mother after the first couple of pages. I did want to know where Nicholas came from, why he showed up, and what happened when Henry and Mom got home, but that’s pretty much left for speculation. It’s a psychological tour de force, and one I admired, but didn’t particularly like, perhaps because it was so effective it made me uncomfortable. It reminded me very much of a Flannery O’Connor story I read recently, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” but I’m not sure why; maybe because that was about a strange mother and son pair, too.
A Jew Berserk On Christmas Eve (Nerve and Pisgah Review)
So much drunken hope! Isn’t that a version of love also, some central, infant aspect of the thing: the dumb throb, the frantic seep? How else do we withstand the rest of the bullshit?
The quote probably does a disservice to the story; it isn’t representative at all. It’s a hilarious sexual farce featuring Jacob, the Jew berserk on Christmas eve. He is berserk because his girlfriend of eight months, Dria, has invited him home (to meet her very WASP one-percenter parents) for Christmas, and has told him she’ll have sex with him on Christmas Eve. What college boy could resist? Dria calls Jacob her “dirty little Jew horn” and “matzo fucker.” The terminology is appalling to him, but: “I wanted to have sex with her really badly.” So he calls her “frog slut” and “Parisian whore.” What happens on Christmas Eve night, I won’t even hint at. I couldn’t possibly. It’s a riot. All that’s missing is Tevye fiddling on the roof. This is the raunchy, irreverant, hilarious Steve Almond at his best.
Akedah (Southern Review) –
You are the mother of a soldier returned from war. He is all you have. Your husband is dead. He married you young, moved you across the state to Philadelphia, away from your family and your congregation. Then he died in a trolley accident. And now your son, Ike, is home from the war, from the Battle of the Bulge, from the coast of France, which you imagine as someplace white and jagged, but he smells different now, of cigarettes and rank cotton. It bothers you especially because you work in a laundry. Your hands are perpetually chapped; the hot water stings.
And we slip into a very different Jewish tale. It’s a magnificent story. This is the one, this story, the one to buy the book for. The story speaks for itself, especially if you’re familiar with the term “Akedah.”
Hagar’s Sons (Ecotone) –
“I am coming to know you. I know, for one example, that you are worried about corruption. You regard it as an unnatural condition. It offends your morality. But what has been accomplished by our species that didn’t involve foresight? Jacob and his birthright. David. Saul. We make the arrangements necessary to honor our covenants.”
“I’m really only half-Jewish,” Cohen said.
I’m perplexed by this story. I follow everything that happens. Thanks to my misspent youth as a fundamentalist, I even have the background knowledge of the biblical Daniel and his dream interpretations, the Colossus, the handwriting on the wall, and the apocalyptic nature of the Biblical text. I have some vague familiarity with Dubai from an old Anthony Bourdain show (the tallest building in the world, the artificial Palm Islands – but I don’t think they’re in the shape of Arabic characters, are they? – the shopping mall in the desert which includes a ski resort complete with snow-covered mountain). But I’m still left trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Is it real, or a fantasy/dream, or a combination? Why is Cohen (the Hebrew word for “priest”) only half-Jewish? Why was Cohen picked at all, for that matter? Is it really saying what it seems to be saying about foreknowledge of 9/11? Or is it a farce about what coulda-woulda happened, the power of greed? A spoof of the tin-hatter theory that the Jews were responsible for 9/11? It’s a fascinating spy story, but I need the Cliff’s notes. Or at least the cue cards so I know when to laugh.
First Date Back (New England Review) –
Strangers kept coming up to Tedesco. They wanted to shake his hand and say thank you. They stared into his eyes with self-satisfied reverence. It was like he’d performed some unpleasant task for them and now they were square.
In this modern reframe of The Best Years Of Our Lives, a homeward-bound soldier falls in love at first sight with a flight attendant. He’s fully aware that his time in Iraq has left him without the social skills needed to conduct a proper romance, and his flashbacks keep getting in the way, but he does his best. It’s one thing to have Brian Williams or Mike Wallace talk about the trauma vets have suffered, or to see documentaries on the issue; it’s another to follow this one guy though his first day back. An excellent tragedy.
A Dream of Sleep (New England Review) –
Death did this. It transmuted each act of love into something unbearable.Was it any wonder he had buried himself?
Wolf Pinkas is a man more comfortable with death than with life. He lives in a cemetery crypt converted into a caretaker’s cottage, and he tends forgotten graves. The more the world changes, the more he withdraws into the world of the dead, his dreams and memories of Poland and the war, his cats, music. In one of his great essays on writing, Almond said, “Plot is the mechanism by which your protagonist is forced up against her deepest fears and/or desires” – and here a teenager does just that.
A good collection – I’m glad I read it, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss it. I have to admit, that I still prefer Almond’s nonfiction (and the flash I found in This Won’t Take But A Minute, Honey) to his short stories. Even so – I’m already waiting for his next collection.
A Just Recompense 